MobiGuide project members met in Brussels in freezing January weather. The occasion was the second year project review. A demonstration of the latest version of the MobiGuide system was a highlight of the two-day review held at the European Commission.

During a packed agenda the five expert reviewers heard reports on scientific and technical progress from the project coordinator Professor Mor Peleg and from each of the 12 Work Packages that were active in Year 2.

Project members from Atos, University of Twente, Ben Gurion University, MobiHealth BV and Universidad Politecnica de Madrid

The Work Package managers led their teams in presenting progress made in the second project year on Knowledge Acquisition tools, Natural Language Processing, design and Implementation of the Distributed Decision Support System, intelligent data analysis, semantic data integration, privacy and security, dissemination and exploitation, training and Quality Assurance. Dr. Mercedes Rigla and Dr. Carlo Napolitano presented the view of the clinicians participating in the project and Àngels Pallàs from Associacio de Diabetics de Catalunya represented the patient perspective.

Iñaki Martínez Sarriegui demonstrates the mobile part of the MobiGuide system

The MobiGuide system has been greatly extended since the previous demonstration in Brussels one year before and was based on an extension of the scenario which drove the demonstration in Pavia in September. Following the now established MobiGuide tradition (after “Hello Tallin” and “Hello Pavia”) the demonstration was codenamed “Hello Brussels” and tells the story of a fictional patient, Montse, a patient with gestational diabetes, and her use of the MobiGuide system.

The smartphone GUI developed by Universidad Politecnica de Madrid.

The MobiGuide system demo and accompanying presentation were led by Technical Manager Dr Tom Broens of MobiHealth B.V. Tom leads Task Force 4, which masterminds the technical development of the MobiGuide system.

The demo featured several new components not seen in Brussels at the previous review, namely the mobile part of the Decision Support System, the Quality of Data Broker and the data notification system. Functionality of the existing components has also been greatly extended, including personalization of the customized CIG (Computer Interpretable Guideline) to the individual patient.

The distributed decision support system produces guideline-based recommendations to the patient

The smartphone collects and analyses data from sensors worn or used by the patient and is the gateway whereby the patient interacts with the rest of the complex distributed system.

The demo featured a live link between Brussels and the hospital in Pavia which will participate in the pilot. The pilot in Italy (with Atrial Fibrillation patients at the Fondazione Salvatore Maugeri Clinica del Lavoro e della Riabitazione) and the pilot in Spain (with Gestational Diabetes patients at Corporacio Sanitaria Parc Tauli de Sabadell) are scheduled to start at the end of 2014.

Distributed system: MobiGuide demo features live link between Brussels and hospital in Pavia

All the technical partners were involved in the demo, some were present in person in Brussels and some worked remotely in this international multi-center demonstration.

The presentations and demonstration were well received and the reviewers judged the second project year a success, with the project having good impact and good scientific and technical progress.

Professor Silvana Quaglini of University of Pavia and Professor Elena Hernando of Universidad Politecnica de Madrid

The team also managed to squeeze in several formal and informal meetings around the busy review agenda, taking advantage of the opportunity to discuss face-to-face rather than by skype.

Focal points in the third year will include finalising the pilot system and planning the exploitation phase.

Project coordinator Professor Mor Peleg takes questions

After the successful review, project coordinator Mor rewarded the team with a personal donation of chocolates customized to feature the Flintstones (this year the Flintstones played the main characters in the presentation explaining the “Hello Brussels” scenario).

Another great MobiGuide tradition!

Montse the patient and her team: Teresa the clinical expert, Bill the Knowledge Engineer and Jim the endocrinologist

Mor Peleg comments: We're half-way there: MobiGuide completed its second year successfully with a great review. So far, we've made progress in both clinical domains (Atrial Fibrillation and Gestational Diabetes), creating a secure distributed decision-support system with a knowledge-projection mechanism that can be customized to personal and technological context. The notification mechanism is in place and semantic data integration uses generic data insertion methods. Looking forward to the third year, when system development is planned to be completed.